


Only to Uncertain Days

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon, Post-War, Tea, significant tea-brewing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 05:58:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9534827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: In the mid-1950s, Sam Wainwright grieves a loss, and calls on an old friend.





	

The day has long since ceased to feel real. Sam shakes the hands of friends and acquaintances, constituents and distant relations, and keeps her eyes fixed on the lower branch of the elm tree closest to the freshly-dug grave. She is dimly conscious of Mr. Foyle’s presence; an apparently-coincidental clearing of the throat or shifting of weight from him can startle an oblivious hand-shaker into concluding drawn-out condolences. Periodically, she glances down at small Christopher, standing beside her. His eyes seem to be larger, his lower lip less firm, each time she looks. There isn’t anything she can do about it. Sam counts the leaves on the elm tree.

“I’m so sorry, Sam.” She’s been automatically responding to these words for what feels like a lifetime, but this voice gains her attention. The hand clasping hers is ungloved, warm. Sam pulls her gaze away from the elm tree. The face of the man holding her hand in his is marked with unfamiliar lines, unfamiliar reserve. He is unmistakeable.

“Andrew.” Sam swallows. “Thank you.” There seems nothing else to say, or too much.

Her hand is gripped more firmly. “If I can help in any way,” he says, “my father knows where to find me.” He is gone before she can speak again, or burst into tears.

“I’m so sorry,” says another mourner, taking her hand.

She half-jumps when Mr. Foyle touches her arm. “Come on; I’ll take you home.” 

Distracted, Sam looks around. She has done the impossible; she has lost more. “Christopher?” 

“Picking flowers… there we are.”

Her son emerges from behind a Victorian mausoleum, and Sam stifles a sob. The boy is holding two bunches of flowers–-wildflowers, Sam is relieved to note; no hothouse bouquets have been plundered. One he presses into her hands. The other he places, with a tenderness entirely lacking in solemnity, on his father’s grave. It is then that, finally, Sam weeps.

The next weeks pass in a blur. Mr. Foyle, surprisingly, makes casseroles; obediently, she eats them. Her doctor prescribes sleeping pills; obediently, she takes them. They survive, she and Christopher. He returns to school. At his football matches, she and Mr. Foyle sit side by side. They have done so before; after all, he is the boy’s godfather. They have even done so alone; Adam was often busy at the House. Sam tells herself that it is irrational to feel his absence more keenly now, with an intensity like that of rage.

“He seems to be doing well,” says Mr. Foyle, at one of these games.

“Yes,” says Sam, not taking her eyes from her son. Only recently has his gangling form seemed to her heartbreakingly fragile. “I think so. All things considered.” She rubs her nose vigorously. “Thank you, by the way.”

He tilts his head at her. “For what?”

“Casseroles,” says Sam. “Asking after him. Being here. Taking him to tea and things. Everything, really.”

“Well.” The syllable is so familiar to her, it seems itself a consolation. “You’re most welcome. You know that.”

She nods, tight-lipped, unable to speak.

“After all,” he adds, quietly enough that she has to lean closer to hear him over the noise of those around them, “I do know something of what this is like.”

It is of this conversation that she thinks when she is doing the washing up the next week. She had made soup; Christopher, excruciatingly polite, had not said that the onions were scorched, or that the broth was thin. She had steeled herself to ask him what was wrong: “It’s not only the soup, is it?”

He had laughed, and then looked faintly guilty. “No, it’s not the soup.” A pause, during which the ticking of their hall clock seemed painfully loud. “It’s… it’s just that none of the fellows at school understand. Except Reynolds, and his dad was killed in the war before he was born. And that… he helps, but it’s different, isn’t it?”

She hadn’t known what to say; she had merely taken her boy in her arms and held him, as tightly as she could, before releasing him. And she lets her own tears fall into the dishwater, and wonders what to do. Until, with painful clarity, it comes to her.

She rings Mr. Foyle without allowing herself to look at the clock, or think about all the possible objections she could raise, if giving herself the time to do so. 

Mercifully, Mr. Foyle greets her request without apparent skepticism, or even much apparent surprise. “Yes, of course,” he says. “I quite understand. You’ve got a pencil?” She is relieved that he does not give her time to rush into explanations or excuses.

She stands with her hand on the Bakelite receiver long enough to register that she is trembling. “Get a grip, Stewart,” she says aloud, and picks it up again. It might help, she tells herself, listening to the ringing on the other end of the line. It might help.

“Foyle.” 

His voice is strange-familiar. Sam swallows hard. “Andrew. Hullo. It’s Sam. Samantha Wainwright.” _Oh God_.

“Sam.” All she hears in his voice is a release of tension. “How are you? I know, that’s an idiotic thing to say. Sorry.”

She exhales. “That’s all right.” Leaning against the wall, she tells herself it is absurd to be comforted by his maladroit sympathy.

“Tell me what I can do.”

“Oh…” She wipes her tears roughly away with the heel of her free hand. “I–-I don’t know, really. I just hoped you might…” And suddenly, irrationally, she is crying, and hating herself for it. She forces herself to draw breath. “I hoped you might…”

“It’s all right,” says Andrew, somewhere on the other side of London. “It’s all right. Whatever it is… whatever it is, Sam, I’ll do my best.” She is choking on her own sobs, stifling them so that Christopher will not hear. On the other end of the line, she hears Andrew’s deep-drawn breath.

“Ring back later, if you like,” he says, quietly. “I know it must be awful for you. I don’t know how awful…”

Sam hiccups. “But you’ve lost people.” _All those deaths, during the war…_

“Not like this.” 

Again, more firmly, Sam wipes away her own tears. “No,” she says. “No, not like this. But–-oh, Andrew, what I wanted to ask–-it’s an awful cheek.”

His half-voiced laughter, under his breath: how strange not to have forgotten that. “Not between us, Sam. Never between us. How much do I owe you?”

“Well!” She speaks hurriedly, anxious to cut off that gentle voice. “It’s nice of you to put it like that.” _Nice? Oh, honestly._

“Anyway, what I was going to say… it’s about Christopher.” She swallows. “The thing is, none of his friends have lost a parent. And–-and I didn’t, not until much later. And…”

“And you thought I might talk to him about it.”

“Yes.” Her own voice sounds small in her ears.

“Yes.” It is a minute before she realizes he has echoed her. “Sam?” says Andrew. “Are you there?”

“I’m here.” Sam clears her throat. “Oh, Andrew, it’s–-I–-thank you.”

“Of course. This Saturday? 10 o’clock?”

She is grateful not to have to make any more choices. “This Saturday,” she affirms, and allows the receiver to slip from her hand, which is shaking, now, with what she tells herself is pure relief.

That Saturday, and the next, and the next. Each week she finds herself contemplating the event with incredulity, and what feels almost like irritation. She tells herself that she should dismiss him from his duties. Or that she should hint to Christopher to do so. But when, on their return from their first picnic (Andrew’s idea), the boy had asked, eyes shining, if they could do it again, she had been stunned into momentary silence. She hadn’t had the heart to gainsay Andrew’s ready assent. 

Thus, on yet another Saturday, Sam sees off her son in the morning, and welcomes him back in the afternoon. He almost ducks under her arm; there is, it seems, a football match on the wireless.

“Thank you,” says Sam.

“Don’t mention it.” He is standing, hat in hand, on the pavement; it is still strange, in some way, to see him in civilian clothes.

“I’m glad to do it, you know.”

Sam shakes herself. “I know–-I mean, thank you. He’s… it’s helped.”

“I’m glad.” They fall silent, yet Sam feels, vertiginously, that there is no distance between them, no wall created by pride or injury or time. And how strange _that_ is, she thinks, after all these years.

“Look,” says Sam, “would you like to come in? I was just going to put the kettle on.”

His face is cracked open by a smile that reminds her of the younger man who, once, wept in her arms. “You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

He comes onto the front step, fingering the brim of his hat. “I’m not asking for a second chance, Sam.” Momentarily he drops his gaze, before meeting her eyes again. “You’ve given me too many of those already.”

She feels the tension melt out of her shoulders. “Understood,” she says. “But how about a cup of tea?”

“I’d love one,” says Andrew, and steps over her threshold.


End file.
